Former Enemalta Chairman Tancred Tabone and his consultant Frank Sammut acted to block the 2004 privatisation of the corporation’s oil storage facility when they were secretly partners in a private company that had an interest in matter, a court heard this morning.

The chairman of the privatisation unit, Emanuel Ellul testified in court this morning that he had never come across a privatisation which was riddled as this with obstacles and sabotage.

Eventually the process was blocked following a decision by then Finance Minister John Dalli and Infrastructure Minister Austin Gatt who were acting on a 2004 report penned by Frank Sammut and which argued that it was not in the government’s interest to sell the company.

Mr Sammut argued that Malta needed to hold on to MOBC because it would otherwise not be able to meet its EU obligations to have adequate reserves of oil in case of emergency.

“At the time I was not able to counter this report and a political decision was taken to stop the process. But had I known then what I know now, I would have definitely managed,” Mr Ellul said.

The report briefing the ministers against privatisation was the final straw in a series of obstacles that the two placed in the way of the privatisation.

“There are always some obstacles to privatisations, because often people in the management start making considerations about their positions and their jobs, for instance, but I can say with a clear conscience that there has never been a privatisation that faced so many obstacles,” he said.

He said that he placed in context the actions of the two former public officials when their silent partnership in Island Bunker Oils was revealed before the election as part of the oil scandal revelations.

The two had signed a note before the privatisation process started in 2003 declaring specifically that they did not have a conflict of interest.

He was testifying in the case against businessmen Tony Cassar and Anthony Portelli, who are pleading not guilty to bribery and being accomplices in a crime committed by public officials and money laundering.

The case hinges on their ownership of the bunkering company Island Bunker Oils and in which both Mr Tabone and Mr Sammut were silent partners while they served as Enemalta Chairman and MOBC CEO respectively.

The case is not directly linked with the oil scandal that broke before the election and on which Mr Tabone and Mr Sammut stand charged with corruption for allegedly taking commissions on the sale of oil bought by Enemalta.